Don't Believe the Hype- Understand the benefits before you jump in

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It’s great to see analysts like Gartner urging caution around cloud adoption because it’s important to see beyond the hype. Cloud computing will not be right for everyone and everything and it’s important to realise that not all cloud services are created equal.

Having been early into the industry, it is gratifying to see that my predictions for the benefits that cloud brings business have become reality: we’re now at the stage where cloud is going beyond early adopters and is reaching its peak as defined by the Gartner hype cycle. It is during this phase that customers need to be extra vigilant. With previous generation services being rebranded to take advantage of the latest buzzword and industry standards still in their infancy, it really is a case of ‘buyer beware’.

But why do people want to go to the cloud? Apart from being the technology du-jour - which let’s face it is not a good reason to adopt any technology - cloud does bring real benefits to IT departments, especially in their ability to be more responsive to their organisation. Cloud systems enable IT to become much more agile than in the past by allowing IT admins to worry less about the underlying systems and invest their time instead in configuration and integration.

But that is all a pipe dream unless you know how to transition responsibly and pick a vendor with the right technology. The two vital technologies you should look out for at a vendor are 1) Multi-tenancy and 2) Horizontal Scalability.

More on that next week- until then as Public Enemy said- Don't Believe the Hype.